


All Talk

by orphan_account



Category: Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Genre: F/M, Fade to Black, Mostly Dialogue, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paunchy watchmen and Floating Graves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Talk

"There's nothing so beautiful outside as in."

Nazca swiveled on scored boots, ignoring the cold and lovely morning filtering through the Floating Grave's last unbroken window in favor of Locke Lamora. He carried a plate of pig, fresh from the oven, although the light in his face suggested as much interest in her as its crackling skin. "You think you're adding to the ambiance? Were there a thousand of you, this place would sink faster than a whorehouse staffed by Red Guards."

He dimpled, not looking down. She'd kicked him once, she remembered with fondness, and the way her shoes multiplied a child's force as easily as Camorri thieves multiplied capital— he'd remember too, and dance around her barbs and feet like a puppet, clever and controlled and never eluding her pulls. "I rate higher than the watchman, surely."

"The paunched gout-punched bastard with his eyes and hatchet on you? I'd have him first."

Locke had added new scrapes to his plate with the speed of his devouring. "Mm, one exception proves a rule."

"The lily-skinned weak-hearted idiot, there? Him too."

"Well," he said, leaving his lips printed in oil on her hand, "they'd fall over a beauty like you. We thieves have to wait to steal from _someone_."

She drank more beer. She was twenty-six and the same hops brimmed her cups, now although there was the dubious advantage of having servants actually come to her when her drinks spilled. "And who would you steal from?"

Locke waved with a clean bone. "All of them there, of course."

"Maybe you mean just my old man."

"Far be it from me to further belittle my lessers," Locke offered, but his fork stopped moving.

"You're not the one who has to see his face every day," she said, and then, because she was going there anyway, "Or calculate the value of every face he doesn't see these days."

Pachero might have sworn to kill her enemies for her. Anjais might have laughed at that grandiosity and touched her wrist, as though the mingling of a few skin cells would also impress into him the feeling of being cooped up for weeks. Locke, he had explained once, drunk as a display shark by her side, had been raised by a man whose education extended beyond thievery. The scholar her father who no longer read any books but debts shared something with Father Chains: gestures better identification than the Right sigils. Locke held out his own right wrist veins up, instead, and murmured something about chaining himself to her before he disappeared.

There were particularly good days to talk about one's own honor-bound people disappearing, but she wasn't inhabiting one of them.

Locke whispered exactly what she was thinking. "Forget it."

"We should go somewhere. If we're going to talk about disappearing people. Alone. Go alone, I mean."

"Want the watchman gone? He may be a pretty boy, but he isn't expensive."

"Locke!"

"I do what I can."

"As garrista to pezon, Locke, you could talk less."

"Sure, Capa Barsavi."

"You don't joke—"

"If your brothers were here, I'd call them capa too. I'm nice to everyone who has something for me. You have your own ugly self, and your brothers have a sister." He gave her a smile. "But they're not here offering to take me to bed."

"Bed," she said quietly.

"I—" His right hand returned to his side. With Locke, one could never tell if such an action was consciously plotted or the result of his usual momentum randomly sparking the right channels. "Is that too much, Nazca?"

"You won't be by for another week."

"I have to conduct business," he said, and even if he was playing her she liked knowing he was friendly about it, not doing it for pure expediency. "Any instructions, boss?"

"You'll do something for me first." She did not kiss him, aware of the watching eyes around them.

"Want me to rob some cradles?"

"Just the sheets," she said, and held up to him a wrist as steady as any businesswoman's.

**Author's Note:**

> Read the series years ago. Fandom, what you do to me ;__;
> 
> All kinds of feedback are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
